Saturday, December 7, 2013

REMEMBERING NELSON MANDELA

I
remember when we learned that Nelson Mandela was planning to make his farewell
address to the United Nations, our Abolition 2000 Network organized an
international letter writing campaign to him to call for the abolition of
nuclear weapons in his UN speech. Sure enough, the London Guardian reported on
its front page, Nelson Mandela Calls for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons! In
his speech he actually said "what do they need them for anyway?" I
only hope that we can honor and remember the enormous contribution he made to
peace when he used the truth and reconciliation process he started as President
of South Africa to avoid bloodshed and dedicate ourselves to making that
process work for Syria, for Israel-Palestine, and other troubled spots on our
beleaguered planet. Let us truly honor him by putting revenge and war behind us
in a more peaceful world!

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Grassroots Pressure Builds on
Nuclear Dependent States to Come Out from Under Their Nuclear Umbrella and Take
a Stand to Ban the Bomb

Steve Leeps, former Chair of
the Hiroshima Peace Foundation and organizer of Mayors for Peace, wrote a great
article on recent developments in Japan, where citizen pressure caused Japan
tosign on to a statement at the UN
General Assembly emphasizing the catastrophic consequences of nuclear war and stating
that nuclear weapons should not be used under “any circumstances”.This past summer in Geneva, Japan,
sheltering under the US promise to use nuclear weapons on its behalf in
retaliation for any attack it might suffer, refused to sign a similar statement
and caught tremendous disapproval from citizens active in the new International
Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons working to ban nuclear weapons, just as the
world has banned chemical and biological weapons.Steve posted his article to an expert group
of US campaigners against nuclear power http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/mediacenter/article.php?story=20131029144834760_en&query=leeper.

One campaigner asked: “Does Japan have any nuclear
weapons? I thought they did not.”

I replied as follows:

The short answer, is no, they
don’t have nuclear weapons, but they are part of a nuclear mafia that shelters
behind the US nuclear “umbrella” pledged to be used on their behalf should
their enemies fail to be “deterred”.Additionally, since every nuclear reactor has the capacity to manufacture
nuclear bomb material, Japan has all the technology it needs to swiftly
assemble nuclear bombs of its own, having enriched uranium to weapons grade, as
has Brazil and others, the very thing we are threatening to go to war over with
Iran.In other words, it’s OK for Japan,
but not for Iran because Japan is part of our alliance.Indeed we actually park a few hundred
nuclear weapons on the territory of our NATO allies, including Germany,
Netherlands, Turkey, Italy, and Belgium!!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing

And this despite our promise
in the Non-Proliferation Treaty as one of the five recognized nuclear weapons
states (UK, France, China, Russia) not to share nuclear weapons. The NPT is a
flawed Faustian bargain in which the five nuclear weapons states promised to
give up their nuclear weapons in return for a promise from all the other
countries in the world not to get them.To sweeten the pot, the non-nuclear weapons states were promised an
“inalienable right”, to “peaceful“nuclear power thus giving them the keys to
the bomb factory.Only India, Pakistan
and Israel refused to sign and they got their own nuclear arsenals.North Korea availed itself of its right and
then walked out of the treaty to build a bomb.This is the right Iran is lawfully asserting.

For
years, those of us battling nuclear power, and those of us working to ban the
bomb, have operated in separate spheres.This was the result of a deliberate policy by the US after the
horrendous revulsion at what occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to make the
atom more acceptable to people.Hence,
President Eisenhower,
seeking to counter public revulsion at the normalization of nuclear war in US
military policy, was advised by the Defense Department’s Psychological Strategy
Board that “the atomic bomb will be accepted far more readily if at the same
time atomic energy is being used for constructive ends.” Thus his Atoms for
Peace speech at the UN in 1953, in which he promised that the US would devote
“its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous
inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to
his life” by spreading the peaceful benefits of atomic power across the
globe. The benefits of nuclear
power were aggressively marketed as miraculous technology that would power
vehicles, light cities, heal the sick.The US made agreements with 37 nations to build atomic reactors and
enticed reluctant Westinghouse and General Electric to do so by passing the
Price Anderson act limiting their liability at tax-payer expense.

The
fallout from the 1954 Bravo test of a hydrogen bomb contaminating 236 Marshall
Islanders and 23 Japanese fisherman aboard the Lucky Dragon and irradiating
tuna sold in Japan resulted in an eruption of rage against the atomic bombings
which were forbidden to be discussed after 1945 by a ban instituted by US
occupation authorities.For damage
control, the US NSC recommended that the US wage a “vigorous offensive on the
non-war uses of atomic energy,” offering to build Japan an experimental nuclear
reactor and recruiting a former Japanese war criminal, Shoriki Matsutaro, who
ran the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper and Nippon TV network to shill for nuclear
power by getting him released from prison without trial.

The Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty Organization, does global monitoring for radiation releases, to make
sure no one is cheating on promises to stop full-blown underground tests (not
to be confused with sub-critical tests, 26 since the 1992 treaty was signed, where
the US blows up plutonium with chemicals at the Nevada Test site on Western
Shoshone land, claiming that since there’s no chain reactions they’re not
really tests!?).The CTBTO originally
reported some of the fallout from Fukushima but now all reports are going to
the industry-corrupted IAEA and the WHO and to governments.We need a FOIA to find out where the fallout
is going.See www.ctbto.org

This has been a long answer
to a short question about Japan’s nuclear status, but y’all know more about
nuclear power than anyone else in the US and it’s important that you know about
its evil twin, the nuclear bomb.The
Abolition 2000 Network, working for a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons
recognized the “inextricable link” between nuclear weapons and nuclear power in
1995 when we were founded.See www.abolition2000.orgThe
ICAN campaign that Steve Leeps referred to is a new and exciting development to
get a simple treaty saying that possession, use, manufacture of nuclear weapons
is illegal and should be banned, just as we have banned chemical and biological
weapons.A legal ban treaty would have
the advantage of not needing the recalcitrant nuclear weapons states to
negotiate it.Those negotiations would
come afterwards for a treaty to actually eliminate them.In the meantime, we are shaming non-nuclear
weapons states to take a less hypocritical honest position, and to stop hiding
behind the nuclear umbrella. Since the fall UN meeting, questions have been
raised in Germany and Italy as well, nations which actually house and shelter
US nuclear bombs on their territory as part of NATO’s unlawful nuclear sharing
program.See www.icanw.org

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Time for a Missile Ban
Treaty

By Alice Slater

This July, only one day after the US celebrated another anniversary of its
Declaration of Independence from tyranny, it was reported that once more, a test
of US anti-missile defenses against incoming long-range ballistic missiles,
launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California had failed again.This was the third consecutive test of the
Missile Defense Agency’s Ground-Based Mid-Coursesystem, in which our military was unable to
intercept an incoming missile, programmed to target the US, which had been
launched towards the mainland from the U.S. Army's Reagan Test Site on
Kwajalein atoll, in the Marshall Islands.This lunatic program, dreamt up by Reagan and known by its comic book
reality, Star Wars, will never work.Numerous scientists have testified that it would be impossible to
guarantee that our anti-missile interceptors could accurately hit an incoming
nuclear missile, because the enemy launch would be accompanied by a phalanx of
decoys, preventing us from ever knowing with certainty which incoming missile
would be carrying a lethal payload.In
the sixteen tests of this ill-conceived “defense”, only eight have ever hit
their target over the past nine years[i]
and the target has been rigged with a homing device sending a signal to allow
the anti-missile to zero in on its location.One truly need not be a rocket scientist to figure out that this ill-gotten
program, a multi-billion dollar gift to the
military-industrial-academic-congressional complex is insane because no enemy
attack would give such friendly instructions to our “defenses”.

In 2002, the US unilaterally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty which had been negotiated with the Soviet Union as a way to slow
down the arms race.The two countries
reasoned that if they refrained from building anti-missile systems, they could
also stop the burgeoning pile-up of missiles they were acquiring to “deter”
each other during the Cold War.After
the Berlin Wall came down, any good will we had built up with the Russians
swiftly began to dissipate.We expanded
NATO right up to Russia’s border, despite promises we gave to Gorbachev that if
he didn’t object to a united Germany joining NATO, it would expand no further.Russia lost twenty million people during the
Nazi onslaught, and was understandably wary of a reunited Germany in NATO. Today
NATO is even working to admit former Soviet Republics, Georgia and Ukraine, as
members.And we are planting our missile
“defenses” in Poland, Romania, and Turkey.A powerful global grassroots campaign influenced the Czech Republic to
back out of a scheduled deployment in that eastern European country.Adding
Turkey to the mix of NATO missile bases must be particularly offensive to
Russia, when you consider that part of the deal during the Cuban missile crisis
between Kennedy and Khrushchev, was a secret agreement to remove US missiles from
Turkey when the Soviets agreed to bring back their missiles from Cuba.

The US anti-ballistic missile defense program, started in 2002 after we
walked out of the ABM Treaty, now deploys about 30 interceptors in Fort Greely,
Alaska and at Vandenberg in California.Despite the latest fizzle, the Pentagon announced that it would not be
deterred in its plans to place another 13 interceptors in Alaska at a cost of
$1billion.In addition, the Congress has
mandates that the Pentagon study an ground-based missile defense system in
either New York or Maine.One of the
biggest sticking point in moving towards meaningful negotiations for nuclear
disarmament is Russia’s strong objection to the US missile defense program.When you realize that it wouldn’t work
anyway, that it’s costing billions of dollars and untold losses of intellectual
treasure applied to meaningless work, surely it’s time to call for a missile
ban treaty. [ii]Indeed, both China and Russia have repeatedly
offered a draft treaty to ban weapons in space where the US was the only nation
to block their proposal at the UN’s Commission on Disarmament which requires
consensus to move forward.Any ban on
weapons in space would have to deal with the missiles as well which are an
integral part of a space fighting system.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Renewable Energy: An Idea Whose Time
is Now:Obstacles and Opportunities

Left Forum, June 9, 2013

Despite
promising reports and overwhelming factual evidence that it is totally possible
to wean ourselves off of polluting and death delivering energy systems—fossil,
nuclear, and industrial biomass—which are threatening planetary destruction and
public health around the globe-- the common conversation about the
possibilities for a safe clean energy future has been distorted in the media--
muddled by the energy corporations, peddling their toxic fuels by flooding the
airwaves with false advertising and corrupting our elected leaders with
hundreds of millions of dollars spent in lobbying and campaign contributions to
buy their twisted votes.

This month, Common Cause, New York
issued a report, "Generating
Influence: Entergy's Spending and the Battle over the Indian Point Nuclear
Power Plant"
[i]noting that Entergy, the owner of Indian
Point, between 2005 and 2012, spent over $4.5 million in New York State and
$35.6 million in Washington on political contributions and lobbying.

Indian
Point, sitting on the Hudson River only 25 miles from New York, is applying for
a 20 year license renewal for the 40 year old plant.Its operating license expired this year,
although the industry-dominated Nuclear Regulatory Commission unprecedentedly
allows it to continue operating without a license, since they have yet to
decide on the renewal application which was submitted four years ago. [ii]
Indian Point has the distinct advantage of having been mentioned in Al Quaida’s
documents and the 911 Commission Report, as a possible target, at the time the
World Trade Center was destroyed in NYC.It is sitting on an earthquake fault, and has been spewing radioactive
tritium, cesium and other noxious poisons into the Hudson River, killing
billions of fish, and fish eggs a year with higher incidences of childhood
cancer and leukemia reported in the local area.Its radioactive waste pools, have built up more than four times the
radioactive waste materials that the catastrophic Fukushima accident continues
to spew out across the world.

In reporting
on Entergy’s efforts to manipulate the public debate over whether its license
should be renewed, Common Cause notes that in addition to campaign
contributions and lobbying, Entergy has developed a grassroots “astroturfing”
campaign, hiring one of the most sophisticated PR firms, Burson Marsteller, to
create the appearance of public support to perpetuate the life of this unsafe
accident waiting to happen. Entergy established two shill front-group
organizations, NY AREA and SHARE, which hide their connection to their
corporate sponsor while attempting to exert influence on its behalf. [iii]They
have hired former NY Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, to hawk for Indian Point in slick
commercials, both print and TV, as a
provider of safe, clean, energy, with the ex-Mayor threatening that New Yorkers
will have to contend with blackouts if the plant closes, despite numerous studies indicating that the city doesn’t need Indian Point to
meet its energy needs. [iv]

Then
there are the factual distortions raised in the media about the oil
industry’s efforts to mine the filthy tar sands in northern Canada and pipe in
millions of gallons of the dirtiest, most carbon-laden oil clear across
America, from Canada to New Orleans, adding to the catastrophic consequences we
are facing if we don’t rein in our use of fossil fuel.Corrupt member of Congress falsely argue that
as many as 20,000 jobs would be created by the project.USA Today touted that number in a headline, “Obama Rejects Keystone Pipeline: Business
Leaders, GOP Say Decision Kills 20,000 New Jobs.”[v],
despite a Cornell University Global Labor Institute finding that the pipeline
would add only 500 to 1400 temporary construction jobs. [vi]Obama only delayed the decision temporarily
and is now still considering whether to inflict it on the land.

Numerous
studies show that green energy jobs are growing faster than traditional
jobs.A Pew Charitable Trust report
found that between 1998 and 2007, jobs in the clean energy economy grew at a
national rate of 9.1 percent while traditional jobs grew by only 3.7 percent.
By 2007, more than 68,200 businesses across all 50 states and the District of
Columbia accounted for more than 770,000 green energy jobs, despite a lack of
sustained government support in the past decade.[vii] A
2011 Brookings Institute Report found that the clean-economy sector includes
2.7 million jobs. The oil and gas industry, by contrast, has 2.4 million jobs.
Its study,called "Sizing the Clean
Economy," cited jobs scattered across more than 41,000 companies
nationwide, not just in clean energy industries like solar and wind power, but
emerging fields like greenhouse-gas reduction, environmental management,
recycling, and air and water purification technologies.Smart-grid efforts directly employ nearly
16,000 people, and battery technology about the same. Conservation accounts for
a big chunk, with 314,000 jobs, as does public mass transit – 350,000 jobs. Add
to that wind power and solar power, with about 24,000 direct jobs each, and
sustainable forestry products with 61,000.[viii]

A report this year by the Economic
Policy Institute, analyzing 2012 data on green jobs from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, concluded that “greener industries grow faster than the overall economy”,
finding that the productions of green goods and services created 3.1 million
jobs in the US.Green jobs were defined
as those which "benefit the environment or conserve natural resources"
in either their process or output such as jobs in renewable energy, efficiency,
pollution reduction and other traditionally "green" industries, along
with jobs in any industry in which workers’ duties involve making procedures
more energy efficient or environmentally benign.

EPI found that those states which have
a higher share of employment in green jobs,[ix]
like California, New York and Texas, generally fared better in the current
economic downturn.EPI’s statistical
analysis found that a one percent increase in a particular industry's
"green intensity," or share of employment in green jobs, corresponded
with a 0.034 increase in annual employment growth in the last decade.The report noted that green jobs are still
accessible to workers that don't hold a college degree. A one percent increase
in green intensity in a given industry corresponded with a 0.28 percent
"increase in the share of jobs in that industry held by workers without a
four-year college degree."[x]

Working against the momentum to move
to a green energy economy, industry has been able to influence government
policy to continue to subsidize polluting fossil, nuclear, and industrial biomass
industries at much higher levels than funds made available to clean safe, sun,
wind, geothermal and hydropower.The International
Energy Agency estimates indicate that fossil-fuel consumption subsidies
worldwide amounted to $523 billion in 2011, up from $412 billion in 2010. In
comparison, subsidies to renewable energies were $88 billion dollars. [xi]And the IEA figure
doesn’t include the $50
billion a year or so which the US was giving to the Pentagon even in peace
time, just to protect the sea lanes for the oil tankers plying their way across
the oceans with their toxic cargoes. [xii]

The Obama administration has announced
an $8.3 billion subsidy to build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia—the first
new ones to be built since the catastrophe at Three Mile Island,[xiii]
giving short shrift to the greatest industrial tragedy the world has ever
experienced—the melt down of four nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan two
years ago.Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy
and Belgium have agreed to phase out nuclear power, but the United States is in
the grip of a nuclear industry, which keeps insisting that nuclear power is the
answer to global warming because it doesn’t emit carbon during its
operation.This is another gross industry
distortion since there are fossil costs associated with the whole nuclear fuel
chain—from mining, milling and processing uranium to the decommissioning at the
end of the reactor’s lifetime.And a
report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, The Gift That Keeps on Giving, estimates that the nuclear industry
has received hundreds of billions of dollars over the past 50 years from the US
taxpayer, for every aspect of the nuclear chain, including liability insurance
to cap catastrophic losses, to up to $12 billion, with any additional charges
to be borne by the taxpayers.[xiv]It is estimated that Fukushima will cost as
much as one trillion dollars! [xv]Things are looking up though.Just this Friday it was announced that the
hazardous San Onofre plant in California will be shut down.Others that have announced closures in the
past year were the Pilgrim plant in Massachusetts, Keawaunee in Wisconsin and
Crystal River in Florida.Four down, 100
more to go in the US!

Every 30
minutes, enough of the sun’s energy reaches the earth’s surface to meet global
energy demand for an entire year.Wind
can satisfy the world’s electricity
needs 40 times over, and meet all global energy demands five times over.The geothermal
energy stored in the top six miles
of the earth’s crust contains 50,000
times the energy of the world’s known oil and gas resources. Tidal, wave
and small hydropower, can also provide vast stores of energy everywhere on
earth, abundant and free for every person on our planet, rich and poor
alike.From water, broken down by solar
or wind-powered electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen, we can make and store
hydrogen fuel in cells to be used when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind
doesn’t blow.When hydrogen fuel is
burned, it recombines with oxygen and produces water vapor, pure enough to
drink, with no contamination added to the planet.Iceland plans to be completely sustainable by
2050, using hydrogen in its vehicles, trains, busses and ships, made from
geothermal and marine energy. [xvi]

New
research and reports are affirming the possibilities for shifting the global
energy paradigm.Scientific American reported a plan in 2009 to power 100% of the
planet by 2030 with only solar, wind and water renewables, calling for millions
of wind turbines, water machines and solar installations to accomplish that
task.The authors assert that “the scale
is not an insurmountable hurdle; society has achieved massive transformations
before”, reminding us that “[d]uring World War II, the U.S retooled automobile
factories to produce 300,000 aircraft and other countries produced 486,000
more”.Their scenario for 2030
contemplates, in part, building 3.8 million windmills to provide 51% of the
world’s energy demand which would take up less than 50 square kilometers
(smaller than Manhattan). They reassure us that even though the number seems
enormous, the world manufactures 73 million cars and lights trucks every year.

The
authors review the policies that would need to be in place to make the energy
transition, such as taxes on fossil fuels, or at least the elimination of
existing subsidies for fossil and nuclear energy to level the playing field,
and an intelligently expanded grid to ensure rapid deployment of clean energy
sources. [xvii]

The
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) also issued a Report in 2010, 100% Renewable Energy which outlined a scenario for relying on 100%
renewables by 2050. [xviii]

The
Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN) released
their 2012 Renewables Global Status Report and had encouraging news to report:[xix]

·Investment in
renewables increased 17% to a record $257 billion, despite a widening sovereign
debt crisis in Europe and rapidly falling prices for renewable power equipment.

·Photovoltaic module
prices dropped by 50% and onshore wind turbines by close to 10%, bringing the
price of the leading renewable power technologies closer to grid parity with
fossil fuels such as coal and gas.

·Recent estimates indicate that about 5 million people worldwide
work either directly or indirectly in the renewable energy industries.

·The majority of renewables jobs worldwide are located in a handful
of major economies, namely China, Brazil, the United States, and the European Union
where the renewable energy sector contributes 1.1 million jobs

Yet
despite these encouraging reports and facts on the ground, the corporate
dominated media is still beating the drums for continued reliance on fossil,
nuclear and industrial biomass fuels.It
is obvious that they will do all they can to block the development of green
energy because they will lose their cash cows.Once the infrastructure is in, they can’t sell the sun, or the wind or
the tides the way they can peddle coal, oil, gas, uranium, and biomass.

We
mustn't buy into the propaganda that clean safe energy is decades away or too
costly. We need to be vigilant in providing the ample evidence in its favor to
counter the corporate forces arguing that it’s not ready, it’s years away, it’s
too expensive—arguments made by companies in the business of producing dirty
fuel.

Here’s
what Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to say about similar forces in 1936:

We had to struggle with the old
enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking,
class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider
the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs.
We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as
Government by organized mob.[xx]

These
are the enormous forces we must overcome.I heard Ralph Nader speak this week about his new book, I Told You So, at Barnes and Noble.Ralph is suggesting that we all organize
Town Meetings this August with our members of Congress and address an issue of
such unfairness, that it would be easy to build huge alliances and
coalitions—that is to raise the minimum wage.The current federal minimum wage is $7.25,
way below what’s needed to earn even the unrealistically low federal poverty
definition of $18,123 per year for a family of three. Adjusted for inflation,
the minimum wage in 1968 would be above $10.50 per hour.Go to www.timeforaraise.orgIf we are truly the Left Forum we should be
helping tens of millions of Americans currently
struggling to make ends meet.And despite
the general breast beating and bemoaning the loss of jobs to globalization, we
know there could be tens of millions of jobs right here in America if we repair
our infrastructure and stop the corporate rape of the earth by shifting to a
green and sustainable future.

Woolf, Tim, et al.
“Indian Point Replacement Analysis: A Clean Energy Roadmap: A Proposal for
Replacing the Nuclear Plant with Clean, Sustainable Energy Resources.” Synapse
Energy Economics. Cambridge, Massachusetts. October 11, 2012. Available at: http://www.riverkeeper.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Synapse-Indian-Point-Replacement-Study--11.pdf_;.New York Assembly member James F. Brennan and New
York Assembly member Kevin A. Cahill. “Assembly Committees’ Preliminary
Findings Show Indian Point Can Be Shut Down: Proper planning would allow Indian
Point to close with little impact on ratepayers and reliability.” February 1,
2012. Available at http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/James-F-Brennan/story/46159/;
New York Independent System Operator. “Final Draft: New York State’s
Transmission and Distribution Systems Reliability Study and Report.” August 30,
2012. pp. 84-85.

Monday, May 13, 2013

At the end of last year, the airwaves and internet were
filled with chatter about the ancient Mayan calendar which was predicting the
end of the world or a similar catastrophe.Some scholars argued that the Mayan prophecy related not to an impending
disaster but to the end of a 5000 year cycle which would usher in a period of
new consciousness and transformation.While
our planet seems to have dodged a bullet and survived the more gloomy
interpretations of the ancient prophecy, the Mayans may have been on to something as it
appears we are actually seeing the breakup of a certain kind of world consciousness
regarding nuclear weapons this year and
it’s all for the good.

New initiatives for nuclear disarmament are springing up in
both conventional and unconventional forums.Norway stepped up to the plate in
February and convened an unprecedented international meeting to address the
humanitarian consequences of nuclear war.In Oslo, 127 nations, plus UN agencies, NGOs, and the International Red
Cross participated in a debate and discussion of the catastrophic potential of nuclear
weapons.Two nuclear weapons states,
India and Pakistan attended.

The five recognized nuclear weapons states under the
Non-Proliferation Treaty, who also happen to wield the veto as permanent
members of the Security Council (the P5) the US, UK, Russia, China and France,
refused to attend.They spoke in one
voice, as I learned on a conference call with Rose Gottemoeller, US Acting
Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, who told us that
the US decision not to attend the conference “was made in consultation with the
P5.They all agreed not to attend”
because “Oslo would divert discussion and energy from a practical step by step
approach and non-proliferation work. The most effective way to honor the
NPT.”Other P5 spokespeople
characterized the Oslo initiative as a “distraction.”Of course it was a distraction from the P5
preferred methods of business as usual in the ossified and stalled NPT process,
as well as in the procedurally stymied Conference on Disarmament in Geneva
which has been paralyzed for 17 years because of lack of consensus,required by its rules to move forward on
disarmament agreements—a recipe for nuclear weapons forever—with regular new
breakout threats by nuclear proliferators.

Oslo was an end run around those institutions.Taking its model from the Ottawa Process
that wound up with a treaty to ban landmines, working outside of the usual
institutional fora, it held an electrifying new kind of discussion as testimony
was heard about the devastating impacts of what would occur during a nuclear
war and the humanitarian consequences, examining the need to ban the bomb.Prior to the Oslo meeting, more than 500
members of ICAN, a vibrant new campaign, met to work for negotiations to begin
on a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons.At
Oslo, the nations pledged to follow up with another meeting in Mexico.

Right before Oslo, The Middle Powers Initiative, working to
influence friendly middle powers to put pressure on the P5 for more rapid
progress for nuclear disarmament, held a Framework Forum for a Nuclear Weapons
Free World in Berlin, hosted by the German government, under the new leadership
of Tad Akiba, former Mayor of Hiroshima who oversaw the burgeoning Mayors for
Peace Campaign grow to a network of some 5300 mayors in more than 150 countries
calling for a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons.At that meeting, we were urged to organize
Civil Society’s support for a new initiative promoted by the UN General
Assembly’s First Committee establishment of a Geneva Working Group to meet for
three weeks this summer to “develop proposals for taking forward multilateral
negotiations on the achievement and maintenance of a world free of nuclear
weapons. “And then in New York this
September, for the first time ever, Heads of State will meet at a global summit
devoted to nuclear disarmament!

Furthermore, thanks to the tireless organizing of the
Parliamentarians for Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Disarmament,, nearly 1000
parliamentarians from approximately 150 parliaments, meeting atthe Inter Parliamentary
Union (IPU) in Ecuador last month chose the topic "Towards a
Nuclear-Weapons-Free World: The Contribution of Parliaments" as a focus this year under their Peace and
International Security work.IPU, which
includes most of the nuclear weapons states in its 160 parliaments enables parliamentarians
to engage on core issues for humanity. That they chose the issue of nuclear weapons ahead of seven other
proposals indicates the rising interest and consciousness for nuclear abolition
around the world.

And just before this meeting, Abolition 2000,
the global network formed in 1995, at the NPT Review and Extension Conference,
which produced a model nuclear weapons convention, nowpromoted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon
in his five point proposal for nuclear disarmament,held its annual meeting in Edinburg Scotland,
supported by the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which is urging
that after the referendum on Scottish independence from England, that England’s
Trident nuclear submarine base at Faslane be closed, and that Scotland no
longer house the British nuclear arsenal.The network joined with Scottish activists at Glasgow and Faslane
supporting their call to “Scrap trident: Let Scotland lead the way to a nuclear free
world.”

Despite these welcome harbingers of a
change in planetary consciousness in favor of nuclear abolition, we cannot
ignore recent obstacles, setbacks and hardened positions in the old patriarchal
and warlike paradigm.Disappointingly
the Obama administration is proposing deep cuts in funding for nuclear
non-proliferation programs so it can boost spending to modernize its massive
stockpile of nuclear weapons adding another $500 million to the already bloated
weapons budget, which includes spending for three new bomb factories at Oak
Ridge, Los Alamos and Kansas City with programs for weapons modernization and
new missiles, planes and submarines to deliver a nuclear attack which will come
to more than $184 billion over the next ten years.

In the provocative US military “pivot” to
Asia, war games with South Korea for the first time simulated a nuclear attack
where the US flew stealth bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons over
South Korea and sent two guided-missile destroyers off the coast of South
Korea, announcing plans to deploy an advanced missile defense system to Guam in
the next few weeks two years ahead of schedule.

This engendered an aggressive response from
North Korea which moved a medium-range missile to its east coast and threatened
to launch a nuclear attack on the US.The US put a pause on what it had called its step-by-step plan that laid
out the sequence and publicity plans for US shows of force during annual war
games with South Korea.But ominously, the
New York Times reported on April 4, 2013, that the US and South Korea “are
entering the final stretch of long-stalled negotiations over another highly
delicate nuclear issue:South Korea’s
own request for American permission to enrich uranium and reprocess spent
nuclear fuel. “Which raises another key
obstacle to the surge of sentiment for moving boldly towards nuclear
disarmament.

How can we tell Iran not to enrich
uranium when we are negotiating that issue with South Korea as well as with
Saudi Arabia?If we are serious about
nuclear abolition we cannot keep spreading nuclear bomb factories around the
world in the form of “peaceful” nuclear power.That is why this new negotiating possibilities outside the NPT are so
promising.In order to ban nuclear
weapons we are not bound to provide an “inalienable right” to so-called
“peaceful nuclear power, as guaranteed by the Article IV promise of the
NPT.

The tragic events at Fukushima, have
caused a time-out in the so-called nuclear renaissance that expected a massive increase
of nuclear power worldwide.Just last
week, we learned that all of Fukushima’s holding ponds for the toxic radiated
water that is used to prevent a meltdown of the stored radioactive fuel rods by
cooling them with a constant flow of water, the radioactive trash produced by
the operation of nuclear power plants, are all leaking into the earth.We have not yet absorbed the full
catastrophic consequences of Fukushima which is still perilously poised to spew
more poisons into the air, water and soil; poisons which are traveling around
the world.And as the Japanese people rose up to develop
plans to phase out nuclear power, members of the Japanese
military, acknowledging the significance of nuclear plants as military
technology, succeeded in getting the parliament to amend Japan’s 1955 Atomic
Energy Basic Law last year, adding “national security” to people’s health and
wealth as reasons for Japan’s use of the nuclear power.

We were warned from the beginning of the atomic age that nuclear
power was a recipe for proliferation.President Truman’s 1946 Acheson-Lilienthal Report on policy for the
future of nuclear weapons, concluded that “the development of atomic energy for
peaceful purposes and the development of atomic energy for bombs are in much of
their course interchangeable and interdependent” and that only central control
by a global authority controlling all nuclear materials, starting at uranium
mines could block the proliferation of nuclear weapons.[i]Nevertheless, President Eisenhower, seeking
to counter public revulsion at the normalization of nuclear war in US military
policy, was advised by the Defense Department’s Psychological Strategy Board
that “the atomic bomb will be accepted far more readily if at the same time atomic
energy is being used for constructive ends.” [ii]
Hence his Atoms for Peace speech at the UN in 1953, in which he promised that
the US would devote “its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the
miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but
consecrated to his life” [iii]
by spreading the peaceful benefits of atomic power across the globe.

The fallout from the 1954 Bravo test of a hydrogen bomb
contaminating 236 Marshall Islanders and 23 Japanese fisherman aboard the Lucky
Dragon and irradiating tuna sold in Japan resulted in an eruption of rage
against the atomic bombings which were forbidden to be discussed after 1945 by
a ban instituted by US occupation authorities.For damage control, the US NSC recommended that the US wage a “vigorous
offensive on the non-war uses of atomic energy,” offering to build Japan an
experimental nuclear reactor and recruiting a former Japanese war criminal,
Shoriki Matsutaro, who ran the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper and Nippon TV network
to shill for nuclear power by getting him released from prison without
trial.The benefits of nuclear power
were aggressively marketed as miraculous technology that would power vehicles,
light cities, heal the sick.The US made
agreements with 37 nations to build atomic reactors and enticed reluctant
Westinghouse and General Electric to do so by passing the Price Anderson act
limiting their liability at tax-payer expense.Today there is a cap of $12 billion for damages from a nuclear accident.
Chernobyl cost $350 billion and Fukushima estimates are as high as one trillion
dollars.[iv]

Ironically, Barack Obama is still peddling the same snake
oil. During the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit,designed to lock down and safeguard nuclear materials worldwide, Obama
extolled the peaceful benefits of nuclear power while urging “ nations to join us in seeking a future where we harness the awesome power
of the atom to build and not to destroy. When we enhance nuclear security,
we’re in a stronger position to harness safe, clean nuclear energy. When we
develop new, safer approaches to nuclear energy, we reduce the risk of nuclear
terrorism and proliferation.”

The
Good News:We don’t need nuclear power
with all its potential for nuclear proliferation

Following
Fukushima, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Japan have announced their
intention to phase out nuclear power.

New research and reports are affirming the possibilities for
shifting the global energy paradigm.Scientific American, reported a plan in
2009 to power 100% of the planet by 2030 with only solar, wind and water
renewables.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) also issued a 2010 Report 100% Renewable Energy by 2050.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted
that the world could meet 80% of its energy needs from renewables by 2050.[vi]

In 2009 the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), was launched and now has 187 member states.[vii]

We mustn't buy into
the propaganda that clean safe energy is decades away or too costly. We need to
be vigilant in providing the ample evidence in its favor to counter the
corporate forces arguing that it’s not ready, it’s years away, its’ too
expensive—arguments made by companies in the business of producing dirty
fuel.Here’s what
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to say about similar forces in 1936:

We had to struggle
with the old enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism,
war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United
States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by
organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.[viii]

These
are the enormous forces we must overcome.The eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, describes these times as ”the
great turning”.In shifting the energy
paradigm we would essentially be turning away from “the industrial growth
society to a life-sustaining civilization”, foregoing a failed economic model
which “ measures its performance in terms of ever-increasing corporate
profits--in other words by how fast materials can be extracted from Earth and
turned into consumer products, weapons, and waste.”[ix]
Relying on the inexhaustible abundance of the sun, wind, tides, and heat of the
earth for our energy needs, freely available to all, will diminish the
competitive, industrial, consumer society that is threatening our planetary
survival.By ending our dependence on
the old structures, beginning with the compelling urgency to transform the way
we meet our energy needs, we may finally be able to put an end to war as
well.